On Cloud Nine
by Two-Faced Procrastinator
Summary: Shoichi sees just how high up on cloud nine Tsunahime puts Byakuran and desperately tries to bring them back down to earth. *Sequel to DtE.*


**A/N:**

do you guys like my new avatar

its rather lovely isnt it

and Eurwen

do not say a word

that thing

that i told you

you know what i mean

gurrrrl

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Tsunahime never liked looking good, because she didn't believe she looked good.

Her features were nothing special, nothing drab. It was just as it was, plain and simple. Easy to remember and equally as easy to forget. Her little brother and her parents were more memorable than her, because they were special in who they were and she was just fine with that. Maybe at some point she wanted to be seen like them, but that was once, only once.

But it wasn't as if she'd never want to again, she couldn't be so sure of that.

And right now, she wished she was as beautiful a person like her recently-agreed-to-boyfriend-slash-fiancé.

As she stared menacingly at her few pieces of not-homely clothing (which meant that they weren't hoodies or anything of the sort), her mind drifted off to Byakuran.

Now Byakuran, _he_ was beautiful. Handsome too, but beautiful worked better. Tsunahime liked beautiful people, but there weren't many that were beautiful so it was tiring to try and see if they were her type of beautiful.

She paused in her train of thoughts. If she considered Byakuran beautiful, was Shoichi beautiful as well?

Yes. Yes, he was. More so than that handsome-ish albino (but not too much), her cute redhead fellow student was exceptionally beautiful.

Perhaps on par of her brother, as much as she thought that was impossible.

And that child too. The one that raved on and on about beating people up to prove his strength but liked little animals. But he wasn't a child anymore, was he? He was probably only two or so years older than her little Tsuna.

Alas, she knew not many people that were beautiful. Tsunahime sighed quietly and picked up a snug cocoa powder brown and coffee cream white striped sweater (_looking at it made her crave mocha, strangely_). It had one of those loose and enormous collars that hung a little too low. She grimaced. Why had she gotten this anyway? She didn't even remember buying this.

Oh... Her face fell in slight guilt. Her father had gotten her this. It was an overseas-sent present for her sixteenth birthday. He hadn't been able to make it.

At the mention of her father made her despondent. She missed her father and wished he would never come back. She actually missed him, because he was around for nearly the entirety her childhood years. He left her knowing what exactly a father was, but not for his even younger son. She didn't want him to come back, because he would be hurt and Tsunayoshi would be hurt. Neither of them knew each other as father and son.

The tall brunette buried her face in the soft, worn out cotton of the winter sweater. Why was it worn out, again? She didn't remember (_again? Why doesn't she remember these important, significant little details?_), she didn't know if she really wore it or it was worn by someone else.

But who else? Who would wear this? No one could have came in and out of her room during the past two years she'd been attending this college.

The door to her room opened, but she remained lying on her bed with her face into the wonderful sweater she'd gotten from her dear father. She felt much too out of it to be polite, much less think right.

The bed creaked as weight pressed on the springy mattress. A familiar hand touched her hair and combed smoothly through its length. It felt nice, but she wasn't sure who it was.

"Hime," a bittersweet voice called quietly, as if it knew who displaced she felt (_although he chuckled too_), "What are you doing with my sweater? Did you miss me that much? I was only gone for a day."

At this, Tsunahime could feel her shambled thoughts piece themselves together again. This sweater? But this sweater was hers. Whose sweater was it? She shifted her head to face the person, and blinked when she realized it was Byakuran.

Byakuran. (_He was gone for a whole day? When did he leave? She didn't remember. Couldn't. Again..._) Did Byakuran miss his father too?

The usually (_why? Why usually?_) aloof lavender purple eyes were alarmed, concerned. "Hime. I don't have a father. I told you this, remember? And that sweater, you bought it for me."

Remember? She didn't. Couldn't. Not won't. Just for a moment, she wasn't able to. Her voice seemed to have taken a vacation somewhere that wasn't in her body, because she couldn't speak. Or won't.

The sweater was his. Whose? His, Byakuran's. Her... husband? Boyfriend? Colleague? All three of them, probably. Byakuran. Byakuran was beautiful, he should have another beautiful person for himself, all for himself. Two beautiful people, wouldn't that be just grand? It would, she could picture it.

If she closed her eyes, she could picture two, brightly dull lights chained to one another.

And then she fell asleep, dreaming of her little brother. Her little brother, with strong, determined and brilliant sunset eyes. Fighting, alongside a second father and wonderfully loyal friends. Proud for him, wanting to know more of this new yet same little brother, she let herself be lulled into the scenes of Tsunayoshi's glory.

* * *

Byakuran stared at his sleeping fiancée with shock.

Was she sick? He pressed a hand to her forehead and listened to her heartbeat. As he ran his fingers on her skin, no, she wasn't sick at all. No signs whatsoever.

But, clearly, she was delusional. Hallucinating, perhaps? But nevertheless, there was something wrong.

The albino mafia boss lifted her legs and set them properly on the bed (_which was made of __terrible quality, he should fix that_). He spread the blanket over her with a frown. Tsunahime had been muttering things, about beauty and two fathers, one missing and one new, and how that sweater was hers and whether or not he was her fiancé or boyfriend or college friend (_and also Tsunayoshi-kun, but she couldn't possibly know about the mafia, could she?_).

He looked at the soft brown and white winter piece the brunette was cuddling almost accusingly. That had been Tsunahime's "first date present" to him, her reason for it being a sweater that he dressed too lightly for winter time. He'd worn it more often than not, to the point where it felt like feather down.

Why had she thought it was hers? He did leave it behind by accident yesterday because of a hasty, last-minute _famiglia_ meeting.

It was about the financing of the gola mosca; Shoichi and his mechanic friend from France had gotten together with the Lighting Arcobaleno to finalize it, but they needed a good support and back up. Vongola had refused because of the ring incident and as did many other families, because if the big bad didn't, who would?

Byakuran had wanted to settle it quickly and get back to his warm bed that he shared with his fiancée, but _no_, that Verde was stingy and didn't want any failures. The meeting ended too late, and he had arrived just about now.

Why in the world was Tsunahime looking at clothes, anyway? He glanced at the discarded ones, and did a double take.

They were the same clothes she looked over at their first date.

Byakuran was smart, he knew he was, but he didn't want to consider memory loss for his future wife. That was too depressing and he didn't like being depressed. But he hated seeing his love like this, so he dared himself to think of every single mental illness that had something to do with the failure of recognition and recalling ability.

Well, going senile was off the list, Tsunahime may be two or so years older than him but she certainly was not _that_ old.

Dismissing her older age with an absentminded wave of the hand, the albino mafioso whipped out his smartphone and began to text a certain individual that held a good amount of his information.

* * *

Shoichi was jealous.

He found himself jealous a lot these days. He was jealous more often or not. It was bothersome to feel that way, especially during his "work" hours.

Of the things some people had, the people that were their friends, the families they lived with, the things they were capable of doing.

Alright, maybe not _jealous_, but he was certainly wishing that he were in their shoes. Sometimes.

He paused in his furious typing and hung his head dramatically, exhaling a breathy groan. Without looking up at his desktop screen he mashed away on the keys for a second or two before he backspaced. Yes, he could have just highlighted it all and deleted with one, quick and clean tap of the backspace key, but he found it more satisfying if he saw the mess of letters be slowly undone one by one.

He was jealous more often or not. It was bothersome to feel that way, especially during his "work" hours.

His work.

Shoichi took off his thick glasses and flicked them onto his desk. He sighed again, covering his face with his hands. A loud slap echoed in the empty and desolate white room. He dropped his head (_with his hands still on his face_) on the keyboard with a tapping bang. As he rolled side to side without a care of what it was causing to appear on the screen (_and on his important report thing, whatever it was called, document, file, aurgh_), he mulled over his job details.

Byakuran was a _mafia boss_. His "family" was one of the most powerful, he had in his possession the Mare Rings, he had deadly killers for "Guardians", and...

Byakuran was engaged to _Tsunahime_. A girl (_young woman, he corrected himself_) that didn't know just how horrible, how _vicious_ her fiancé was, could be, and is, on a _daily basis_.

But that wasn't the worst part.

Tsunahime was Tsunayoshi's sibling. She was the Decimo's direct blood relative, the boss of the most powerful mafia family to exist. She was the older sister to Vongola's tenth heir (_the reincarnation of Primo, the man who created the Vongola famiglia; his Guardians, all mirrors of the First's own_) and fiancée to the bearer of one of the three Tri-ni-set parts.

He was rambling in his mind. He wasn't even worried about Tsunahime's social status. He was dying over the fact that _because_ of her relations, she was a constant target of Italy's undertakers.

The redhead stood up from his chair suddenly, causing the chair to wheel away. His stomach ached and stabbed, but dread overwhelmed the pain. He was in too much panic to think right. The white room swam in his dizziness. Shoichi gripped at his White Spell uniform and tore the the jacket off, then twisting the high-grade Sun Ring from his middle finger. He threw both items onto the floor, staring wide-eyed at them in a mixture of disgust and fear.

Why did he accept this job? Byakuran knew Shoichi was smart, Shoichi knew himself that he was smart, but maybe not as smart as he thought he was now that he thought about it. He remembered, he recalled that he took the job because it made good use of his high-IQ brain, and he came to appreciate it just after the first day.

Byakuran was not below manipulating his friends. Shoichi knew, from the onslaught of new memories that he didn't experience in his time, that Byakuran would do anything for what he wanted. He would allow the death of his Guardians to gain more power and always keep himself a few hundred steps ahead of everyone else.

Byakuran was going to kill Shoichi without a second thought.

The sixteen-year-old inclined into himself at the flashback, trying to calm himself. In the future, he and Tsunahime's little brother fought together to rewind the calamity Byakuran had detonated onto the entire world. They succeeded, everything went back to the way it should be. But one missing detail haunted Shoichi the minute he noticed it.

Tsunahime hadn't been there. Ten years from now, Shoichi had been the leader of Millefiore's White Spell. He'd mapped out the entire head quarters, memorized every member, both from White and Black Spells. He kept a record of newcomers and deaths, constantly subtracting and adding and burning the resulting number in his mind's notepad.

_Tsunahime hadn't been there__._

Byakuran didn't even _know_ Tsunahime. All he'd known was about her little brother, the to-be Vongola boss. But that wasn't possible, he realized. It wasn't possible, because they all attended the same college. Him, Byakuran, Tsunahime. They _all_ met each other at that place. There was no way Byakuran wouldn't have encountered the older student at the time.

Shoichi would know, he'd checked. At the times he reviewed his parallel world choices, there was always one certain expressionless brunette a bit far off the distance from where Byakuran would bump into the redhead. And always, after the unexpected meeting, Byakuran would trot on back to her with a smile.

But on the last time he changed his future, the last time before the world in the future fell to ashes, _she wasn't there_.

_And it was_, Shoichi thought, with his complexion growing paler and paler each passing second, _the only time Byakuran managed to show any sort of recognition of him_.

Horrified by the sudden avalanche of realization, Shoichi fell down onto the floor. Tears welled in his jade eyes, his heart was tearing itself apart in guilt. Everything that happened, so much _more_ that had happened, was _his fault_.

As they fell and dripped onto his palms, he heard the faint buzz of something vibrating. Sniffing and wiping the wetness from his face, he reached shakily for the discarded jacket and shook it roughly without a care for its state. His cellphone clattered onto the tiled, white floor of his study room. He flipped it open with partially numb fingers.

* * *

**From:** Byakuran-san  
**Subject:** About Hime-chan

**hey shou-chan~ :9 i have a new report assignment for you~  
send me all of hime-chan's medical files, kk?  
dont leave anything out~ :L  
oh yeah I forgot~ :P  
im leaving for namimori! :D taking hime with me and youre coming too~  
get everything ready by 5!  
im counting on you~ ****^v^b**

* * *

**A/N:**

oh

this didnt work out the way i planned

not at all

on the other hand

every chapter will only be around 2000 words

just if i see a review telling me that this was too short or to write more

oh

and

slow update.

lots of

uh

love,

i think,

two faces i rly need to change my naaaem :U


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